Not
long after we built our first new home, Les built a two-room house on
the back of the lot and rented it out for $10 a month. In the meantime,
after renting our first little two-room cabin to a family with four
children for $10 a month, Les sold it to a couple for $1000, including
half of our half acre.

When
Dale was a few months old, we moved into our second new home in the same
area of town on 16th Avenue.

While
living here, Les quit his trucking job and he and his brother- in-law,
Gib Nixon, got a job working on Castle Air Force Base in Lemoore,
California. Gib and Lea Etta had moved to Kettleman City. We moved in
with them. We just left our home in Sacramento and took our clothes with
us.

After
staying a few weeks with Lea Etta, we rented a little one-bedroom
apartment, furnished, and continued to live there until the Lemoore job
ran out, about three months in all. Gene started to kindergarten in
Kettleman City. Dale had his third birthday while we were there. It had
a nice little library, so I did a lot of reading.

We
moved back home in November. When World War II started, Les went to work
for the government at McCleland Field as a carpenter. To my regret, we
sold our 16th Avenue home and moved into a government owned housing
tract closer to Leslie's work.

The
house was roomy enough, but it was almost a shack compared to our home
we moved out of. Renting was not like owning one's home either. I really
disliked living there. I missed my friends and neighbors across town.
Also, I missed Leslie's folks, including his sister and family. They had
all moved back to Los Angeles.

Here
in Parker Tract we lived closer to my parents, but I didn't enjoy
visiting them as I had in the past. As the boys grew older and rowdier,
they seemed to bother my mother a lot. She was having a lot of nerve
trouble.

On
the 18th of August, the day after World War II was over, we moved to Los
Angeles. Les drove an old secondhand pickup he had bought just to move
our belongings and I drove our 1942 DeSoto.

I
should put in a few words here about how World War II affected us
personally. Actually, we were very fortunate. We had no one close that
was in the fighting. Les wasn't drafted because he had a government job.
The rationing of sugar, shoes, and gas didn't really affect us. We
managed to have all we needed. It was a terrible thing just to hear and
read of the awful killings, especially when the atomic bombs were
dropped. To think that many men, women, and children had to be killed
before the war would end was tragic. It was wonderful news to know it
was over.

As
renting a house in Los Angeles was impossible, we moved into the house
with Leslie's mom and pop. Before anyone moves into the home of their
in-laws, they should think twice. They had plenty of room in their four-
bedroom house, physical room that is.

My
mother-in-law seemed to turn from a good friend to an enemy overnight. I
can see her side of it now. They hated to refuse to let us move in with
them, as we couldn't rent a house. We could have bought one, as we had
over $5,000 saved up, but Les and they seemed to be against that.

The
idea was to wait until we could buy lumber and build our own. Pop was
selling real estate by that time. He found a good buy in an old
one-bedroom house. He bought it and we rented it from him. After six
months of living in someone else's home, I think I would have settled
for a tent.

We
needed two bedrooms, but we got along fine because there was a nice
sized dining room Les and I used for our bedroom.

Here
Gene started to school in the fifth grade and Dale in the third. It was
here we met two families that became our lifelong friends, Leslie and
Lois Smith and Bob and Marvel Barchenger. It was also here that I became
pregnant with our third son, Dan. By the time he arrived, Les had built
us a nice two-bedroom house, and also another one, same plan, next door
to it.

He
built these houses while working full-time at Paramount Studios.

When
Dan was nine months old, we bought the farm near Porterville and moved
on it the 16th of May, 1948. Les sold one of the new houses while we
lived there and Pop sold the other one for us after we moved. By this
time, I was again pregnant with our fourth son, Ricky.

I
didn't see the farm until the day I moved on it. The house had been a
garage. The living room was 9 x 20. In back of that was the kitchen and
a very small bedroom. On back was an added-on bedroom, a small bathroom
with no tub or shower, and a service room. There were no halls anywhere.

The
built-on part just had a sub floor with large cracks in between each
board. Bugs, spiders, and mice never had it so good. Moving from a new
house into this was devastating to say the least.

Eventually,
Les made it livable but it took time. To make matters worse, my usual
pregnant illness was upon me. So was the summer heat of the San Joaquin
Valley, which we were very unfamiliar with. That was the most miserable
summer of my life.

The
day after we moved in, a dust storm blew up, the first I had seen since
I lived in Texas. The things I put up with in that house were very much
like the things that Betty of the book The Egg and I had to contend with
on her chicken farm. I had a stove and also neighbors that could compete
with Ma and Pa Kettle.

Here
are a few of the nerve-racking, aggravating things that gave me a bad
time when we first moved in. Mice all over the house. Cockroaches in the
cupboards. The toilet stopped up. Hunks of tar in the water. No cooler.
A little oil stove to cook on. No tub or shower. Mosquitos so thick we
all looked like we had measles in no time.

When
I hung out my clothes, I would hang a few pieces then take out time to
scratch my legs.

Our
water was pumped into an overhead tank. The tank was sealed with tar
which caused the hunks of tar in the water. There was an underground
tank that wasn't being used, so Les re-lined it with cement and put our
house water in there. No more tar.

Les
put out poison grain for the mice but they thrived on it. I finally got
rid of them by finding every place they could get in and nailing lids
out of tin cans over them. About the time I decided we would have to
turn the cabinet over to the roaches, Les found a spray that got rid of
them.

It
took a week to unstop the toilet. Les took it outside, let it set in the
sun a few days, then removed a block of wood someone had put in it. The
sun caused the wood to shrink so it could be removed.

Eventually,
Les built a shower; finished it with rough cement. He also covered the
sub floor. He built a room on the front for the boys bedroom and made a
dining room out of the little bedroom.

When
Ricky was about a year old, he built a side room on for Rick and Dan.
Nothing was finished; nothing was nice. It didn't matter how much I
cleaned or repainted. I just couldn't keep things clean or pretty
looking. The boys tracked sand and dirt in faster than I could sweep it
out.

We
had no lawn. I tried to raise a few flowers, but the dogs and chickens
dug and scratched them up.

One
summer, worms became a pest. When I put Ricky and Dan to bed for the
night, I would have to spend time killing worms about an inch long that
crawled up the walls.

When
Ricky was about two years old, an irrigation canal was put in right
beside our house. I didn't have a moment of peace after that for
worrying that one of the little boys might fall in and drown.

Despite
all the worries and drawbacks of living on the farm, it was good for Les
and the older boys. It got the boys out of a big city and they learned
how to work. Les had back trouble when we moved there. On the farm, he
didn't have to do heavy lifting, so his back trouble cleared up.

One
of the big disappointments of my married life was that I didn't have a
daughter. So in the fifth and last year that we lived in that old farm
house, I became pregnant for the last time. We had been married 19 years
when our daughter, Sheril, was born.

By
the time Sheril arrived, Les had built us a big three-bedroom home. What
a pleasure to live in a nice home again.

I
wasn't looking forward to raising another little one by that canal, so I
was very pleased when Les sold the farm when Sheril was two and we moved
into Porterville--into a new three- bedroom home Les had just finished.
By this time, Gene had graduated from high school and had started to
junior college.

Two
months after leaving the farm, we discovered a lump under Ricky's arm.
That began five years of worry and heartbreak. I was never the same
after that. I knew we would lose Ricky from the beginning, and I had to
learn how to give him up. I didn't think I could endure it, but God
showed me the way.

Nevertheless,
when the time came, it was almost more than I could bear.

We
left the farm after living there for eight years, from 1948 to 1956.
Even though we had built a new home three years before, I was glad to
leave for many reasons. I didn't like living on the farm.

The
main one was my fear of one of my little ones drowning in the canal that
bordered our yard on two sides.

We
moved into a three-bedroom house in Porterville that Les had just built.
For the next four years, Les built houses to sell.

Our
two older sons, Gene and Dale, both graduated from Porterville High
School and then attended Porterville Junior College. Gene started
working at the State Hospital and Dale followed his dad into the
building business. They both married Porterville girls.

Gene
and Lynda Jones were married March 4, 1958. Within a year, our first
grandchild, Kris, arrived. A year and a half later, his sister,
Priscilla Anne, arrived. Now their family was complete.

Dale
married Billie Zakrezski on August 11, 1961. Before long, we had another
grandson, Randy, and eleven months later his brother, Rusty, arrived.
That made their family complete.

We
moved to Cayucos, California, July 6, 1960. Les continued to build
houses for sale. The market for selling houses wasn't any better on the
coast than in Porterville. In fact, it got worse.

We
sold some houses without a down payment. Our daughter, Sheril, started
kindergarten in Cayucos. Dan was in eighth grade and Ricky was in the
seventh.

Ricky
was only 14 when the Hodgkin's Disease took him away. I was so touched
when they let school out the day of the funeral so his friends could
attend. Later, we were presented with money that his friends had
collected to buy his headstone, which says "From All His Cayucos
Friends." This was the worst time of my life.

We
left Cayucos after six years and moved to Morro Bay in 1966 where Les
had built a beachfront house. I love living near the beach, walking on
it, gathering shells, and lying on the warm sand. The scene of the waves
rolling in on the beach from my front windows and the stunning view of
Morro Rock is so wonderful.